title: Motor skills, haptic perception and social abilities in children with mild speech disorders.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The aim of the study was to evaluate motor skills, haptic object recognition and social interaction in 5-year-old children with mild specific expressive language impairment (expressive-SLI) and articulation disorder (AD) in comparison of age- and gender matched healthy children.
  
  
  METHODS
  Twenty nine children (23 boys and 6 girls) with expressive-SLI, 27 children (20 boys and 7 girls) with AD and 30 children (23 boys and 7 girls) with typically developing language as controls participated in our study. The children were examined for manual dexterity, ball skills, static and dynamic balance by M-ABC test, haptic object recognition and for social interaction by questionnaire completed by teachers.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Children with mild expressive-SLI demonstrated significantly poorer results in all subtests of motor skills (p<0.05), in haptic object recognition and social interaction (p<0.01) compared to controls. There were no statistically significant differences (p>0.05) in measured parameters between children with AD and controls. Children with expressive-SLI performed considerably poorer compared to AD group in balance subtest (p<0.05), and in overall M-ABC test (p<0.01).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In children with mild expressive-SLI the functional motor performance, haptic perception and social interaction are considerably more affected than in children with AD. Although motor difficulties in speech production are prevalent in AD, it is localised and does not involve children's general motor skills, haptic perception or social interaction.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Exercise Biology and Physiotherapy, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia. iti.muursepp@ut.ee
authors.forename: Iti
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Müürsepp
authors.forename: Herje
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Aibast
authors.forename: Helena
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Gapeyeva
authors.forename: Mati
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pääsuke
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002658:Developmental Disabilities / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D019957:Motor Skills Disorders / Q000209:etiology*; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000209:etiology*; D012920:Social Behavior Disorders / Q000209:etiology*; D013064:Speech Disorders / Q000150:complications*; D055698:Touch Perception / Q000502:physiology*